[COLUG] stress-testing multi-core systems

[Scott Merrill]

Are there any applications (Windows or GNU/Linux) that folks can
recommend to stress-test _all_ the cores in the modern multi-core
system?  We have ~100 dual-CPU quad-core systems we'd like to burn in.
 We'd been using Folding at Home, but it has a hard limit for only 4
cores, so we're no longer able to stress the entire system with one
application.

We're toying with using VMWare Server to create a GNU/Linux virtual
machine in which to run a distributed computing client (F at H or other).
 VMWare Server has a limit of only supporting 2 cores per VM, so we'd
need to run 4 instances of our VM, each running whatever stress-test
app we decide.

This is less ideal than a native F at H (or similar) solution, which can
be configured to run in such a way that it only fires up when the
system is idle, and reduces its load when a user is actually doing
something on the PC.  This "stress-when-idle" mode is greatly
preferred, so that we can continually stress the systems without
getting in the way of our students.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Scott